U.S. law enforcement officers raided the offices of a Catholic archdiocese diocese in Texas on Nov. 28 in search of evidence of clergy sex abuse, with the local archbishop, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo among those in the authorities’ cross-hairs.

However, the chief target of the sortie appears to have been any documents relating to Father Manuel LaRosa-Lopez, who was arrested in September on four felony counts of indecency with a child, The New York Times reports.

Cardinal DiNardo, who heads the Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and serves also as serves as president of the United States Catholic bishops’ conference,is said to have kept supporting LaRosa-Lopez and elevating him to positions of power among the Hispanic community despite being aware the priest was accused of molesting a teenage girl in 2001.

This week’s surprise raid was apparently conducted amid fears of documents being destroyed in an attempt to frustrate the wheels of justice, as allegations of sex abuse continue to pile up across the nation, the media reports.

Police cars reportedly lined up outside Galveston-Houston Diocese as about 50 plainclothes officers made their way inside.

Given Cardinal DiNardo’s other role as president of bishops’ conference, the raid is being seen as the latest sign of crisis within the Church.

Cardinal DiNardo said his archdiocese had been fully complying with the authorities but J. Tyler Dunman, the assistant district attorney in charge of the investigation, said the raid was necessary as the archdiocese had only turned over some of the evidence.

“We anticipate there being a large volume of records,” he was quoted as saying. “What we’ve been provided with is nowhere near what we expect to find.”

The probe comes after the attorney general in Michigan authorized searches on all seven dioceses in that state in October.

Similar enquiries have now been opened in at least a dozen U.S. states.

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